Morning Stories

If a single word can set the entire arsenal of emotions spinning, then those few letters must be carrying an enormous payload of associations. When spring announces not only itself but is heralded by the writing and rhyming guild, many things begin to sprout anew.

No, I'm not entirely certain — but appearances suggest: most fingers are already finished by the time a human arrives in the cradle. They're still a little small. And still a little clumsy. But as fingers go, they're perfectly fine and ready to feel their way through the world.

Brian is full of meaning. Not the man, mind you, but the name itself. When Brian was still a freshly minted Celt having a look around Ireland, his name gained a little extra weight. The Celts and the Irish agreed that nomen est omen. Brian is the noble one, the strong one, or simply the hill, depending on which way you interpret five letters.

The newspaper hits just as hard in print: overwhelming. Anyone who ventures past the first two pages in the morning will likely feel buried under an avalanche of information. Probably.

Hmm. All right. Let’s start with a little brain teaser. Imagine you’re a member of a venerable old club. One member – let’s call him Uncle Andrew – gets kicked out of the club because he was friends with a certain Jeffrey Epstein. Understandable. Embarrassing. Out he goes.

Fair warning — that was a pun. And it only really works in English. Which is precisely why this version exists. In German, the same line collapses into something flat: "Ach, vergiss es, Gapminder." That's the curious magic of language: meanings drift, shift, or simply fall apart in translation. Still, I found the sentence funny when I woke up, and even funnier once I was fully awake.

Motion is pure physics. Emotion is purely human. E-Motion is an electric vehicle. Anyone who has emotions — and occasionally shows them — has more than just trace elements of humanity to offer.

For fifty years, the family has lived next to the same neighbour. Every morning, a friendly nod across the driveway. They share an access road, a river, a history. Life and community work seamlessly and peacefully. Then one day, a dark cloud appears — one nobody saw coming. The cloud arrives as a document in an anonymous envelope in the mailbox. This single sheet of paper is pure dynamite for the neighbourhood. The document states that you and your family represent a serious and present threat to your neighbour’s interests. Excuse me?

When someone does business with the sick, something is wrong with the system. The association forced itself on me when I took the German word “Krankenkasse” — health insurance, literally “sick cash” — a little too literally to heart. Then I turned westward and noticed “Health Care” in Canada. Which translates, roughly, as “help for the ill.”

The impact was less hard than expected. But the burning on my cheek was impossible to ignore — and good advice was hard to come by. It felt like a clap in the face. Though this very thing — advice in certain situations — is often an uninvited guest. Or the fifth wheel on the wagon.

"Your story today is political again, Christian." Hmm. True. But that wasn't intentional — there was no deliberate plan to make this story political. Why? Because the perfectly ordinary lives we all lead always carry political weight.

The elegant living room has always been an aspiration — ever since civilization, and interior design, were invented.

He wasn’t suddenly there in the room. He’d been present for quite some time. But nobody wanted to notice Dumbo. Or worse: talk about Dumbo. That would be what you might call an absurdity. An absurdity by the name of Dumbo.

Risk? What reads here like the name of a chocolate bar turns out to be far more complex in practice — and rarely comes with any sweetness attached.

A sentence heard often and understood rarely has burned itself into memory. Precisely because it was blown into the air — the hot air — so many times. What could the underlying motivation have been, to push those four words plus exclamation mark into a small boy's ears?

First, there was doubt. The critical looking, the questioning of conditions. The condition of the world. The condition of the soul. Or the condition of the situation.

How America lost its allies — and they started building for themselves.

"Excuse me, what?" When two umlauted vowels land in the same word, things get suspicious — and decidedly Basler. "Wottsch e weeneli im Chläppergässli spaziire, hösch?" (Do you want to go for a walk on Slap Alley?) is a prime example.

Oh no! There he is again – popping up out of seemingly nowhere, without warning. When a word gets dissected into its parts, the original meaning starts to crumble a little. But the variants that emerge are all the more revealing. More often than not, the man – or, well, the man – steps out from the shadow of the word combination and makes himself at home. Again. Or maybe he never left.

Well, another word has nestled itself into the conversation — one that carries this particular, wake-you-up quality: Hopeium. A blend of hope and some metallic-sounding suffix, -ium. Hope is metallic? No. Hope is magnetic.

When the thing is pointed the wrong way, picks up speed, and the obstacle appears out of nowhere – that’s when it gets expensive. Three times the reverse gear in a tin box has handed me the bill.

My dual citizenship is demanding. And binding. I read the Swiss news, watch Swiss broadcasts, and follow the country that shaped me for sixty years.

Two-edged? Isn't that just standard in the production of a sword? Anyway, the comparison doesn't limp — because the sword hasn't been used yet. Or so I think.

What does "cyranomising" mean? Christian Wehrli explores why Cyrano de Bergerac reveals more about language, love, and communication than any textbook. An essay on Rostand, rhetoric, and the power of words.

"So, Eve, how are you doing?" "Oh, thanks for asking. I think I'm doing well." "Eve — were you even asked?"